"Going Galt" is the conservative version of "Moving to France." Lots of people talk about it, but no one has the balls to actually do it.

A romantic name for doing everything possible to make sure Obama and the dems and the majority of the country are not successful in bringing the country together because that would mean they lose power and become irrelevant. Country First my ass. With these people it's ME first,...always.

And hey, lay off Malkin. It's not nice to make fun of the afflicted. Imagine being as ugly a human being as they come with a personality and character to match. Really, her name should be Pat. Few have figured out just exactly what 'it' is besides a karmic curse and the embodiment of hate. I would just give her back her felt and pet mouse and tell her it will be alright.

btw...John Galt is fiction and fiction made out very well making everyone else pay taxes so he had roads and EPA tested food and electricity etc while refusing to pay his share of any of it. All the other characters were fictional a-holes too who did not know how to be efficient or make right decisions...(all were republican conservatives huh working for FEMA or idiot 'liberal' media giants working for...oil men?...hey where were the oil men...so many fictional characters just conveniently left out eh. But aren't all the financial industry's CEO's going Galt...or is it too late ...what with all the bail out money and...oh never mind...it should be "going out Galt" anyway.), unlike today when we have an honest leader with a majority of the country behind him wishing these goobers would just STFU and get out of the way of our nation's healing. These guys have already been Galt...many times over. Greedy little 'Bs'.

The problem is, the plutocracy aren't John Galts. To put it in Randroid terms, they're James Taggarts: moochers, looters, corporate welfare queens. If the fucking MBAs who are forming their little Atlas Shrugged study circles had been paid to stay home instead of hollowing out productive capability to game their own bonuses, we'd be a lot better off.

As for the kind of world we'd have without forensic psychologists, it sounds like an idea for a Radley Balko post.

>But every one of them will free up work for someone else...

Awesome. I wonder if any of my competitors are dumb enough to try that? It'd be a great way to weed the ultra-righties out of the entrepreneurial class. Don't let the door hit you on your way out of business! And thanks for the customers!

This may be the only time that I ever defend Ayn Rand and atrocious dreck like "Atlas Shrugged." However, at least the heroes in that (greatly overlong and extremely flatulent) book actually MADE something useful to the rest of humanity as opposed to the financial flim-flam that the modern-day Wall Street John Galts are responsible for. I have no doubt in my mind that, were she alive, Ms. Rand would have just as much contempt for the lot of them as the rest of us do -- not to mention that Henry Paulson would've done quite nicely as a Randian villain.

To put it in Randroid terms, they're James Taggarts

That they drew the wrong analogy has been bothering me, too.

These clowns are such WEENIES.

Unfortunately, their pseudo-revolution WILL be televised.

More likely, they'll "go Geithner" and forget to pay their taxes.

Its certainly occurred, and the current scope and form of legislation enables it by providing a safe "investment" alternative, federal treasury notes.

Fortunes are made during recessions/depressions when entities that are sitting on a lot of cash have the opportunity to buy stressed but remediable companies and other assets for a song.

That is what is occurring now. There is a great restructuring of the economy currently, in content of what is done in the US and world, and in who controls it.

That change will also turn out to be the historical legacy of the Bush administration, resulting from the very long-term shifts in the tax code (favoring old money in reduction of estate, capital gains and dividends taxes - stodgy money), and the enormous profits on gains and operations of the oil industry (all held in cash, either within entities or distributed to shareholders in dividends).

Those people and institutions, like the enormous resource-based cash wells in unregulated and unregulatable private equity.

In a recession/depression both the bubble and the substantive basis of cumulative valuation of a humming (going concern) economy decline more than the cash representing that economy.

The economy (even if different) will revive, but with an aristocracy, and the prospect of populist-based anger at it.

In an effort to make "every man a capitalist" (through 401(k)'s type "savings"), the conservative movement has constructed an exagerated class system which resembles the old.

There is not social strife as in the past because we are an older society, more emotionally accepting of hardship (less blame), and more efficiently brainwashed, less politically educated, and emotionally anaesthetized even to recognize our own real angers.

Ayn Rand was only relevant as a deterrent utopia to class struggle.

"Hey everyone, we're going to withdraw from society! And guess what? We need a few lucky serv- I mean cooks, plumbers, carpenters, electricians, car mechanics and farmers to come with us!"

[Snerk]

I'm wondering how much wealth a forensic psychologist produces (for anyone but the fp). Or any of the other bozos on your list for that matter.

Oh well. I guess "Going Galt," sounds better (to them) than "Exploiting a tax loophole." I imagine that to people who've been fortunate enough to avoid Ms. Rand's work it sounds like some weird hippy bullshit. To those that understand the reference it sounds incredibly elitist.

People like Smith are analogous to a clogged toilet; it's not going to function properly until you take after it with a plunger, building up sufficient force against the clog so as to push it clear of the trap and into the main pipe that finally leads to the sewer---which, of course, just happens to be the proper place for the going-Galt crowd.

Now, by taking the concept and applying it in a manner directly in opposition to Smith's thinking, one might arguably present a theory for cleansing the planet of these political fools: Instead of "going Galt," we could isolate them into total irrelevancy by declaring them to have been "sent to Galt."

We transform Smith's "verb" into a "noun"---and we don't even have to invoke 9/11. Think of it as Rudi Giuliani in reverse....

Ideological purity is no substitute for critical thinking. If they're willing to forgo making 5 times the average salary to avoid paying 5% extra tax...So be it. Who are they really hurting there?

Rational self-interest indeed...

OY GE GALT!

anyone who believes in the economic thoughts of a 3rd rate writer of turgid novels is a fool.

"going galt" is the wingnut version of

"give me my ball, i'm not playin' any more cause you all are cheatin'"

it's just a tantrum of adolescent-level behavior -- dr helen should know that by trade -- and her own psyche and partner...

oh, and it aint their ball. it never was.

Once "going Galt" fails to make teh economy tailspin, they'll realize they need to do more than just sit out if they're going to ruin the insufferable proles.

They'll need to keep their lawyers on the take to lobby for patent extensions, legal challenges to competing businesses, extend financing and bankruptcy protection, as well as crop subsidies for those who have let tehir "famrs" go fallow for teh 15th year straight....

There's a lot of work involved in making sure no work gets done.

People may WANT to fill the void, but if they were halfway serious, they'd be discussing how to deliberately tank the economy to make sure "going Galt" is effective in bringing the rabble to heel.

May I suggest cutting the federal budget at every opportunity to minimize the demand for work by those unworthy peasants?

Then work on some of those taxes that might force upper crust folk to get off their butts and generate the wealth they claim to be so good at. Death Tax, I'm lookin' at YOU...

A lot of these skanks got paid to "reduce labor costs" and lay people off. Furthermore, their speculative action fueled the bubble and much of the current crisis. And REM we don't need "rich people" for investment purposes per se, we just need the money itself. If that money is spread around more, then more people can do the investing and get the returns.

The book by Ms. Rosenbaum isn't just fiction but science fiction. (not that there's anything wrong with that!) Using machines which convert static electricity in the air into the energy used to power your secret compound, to the best of my knowledge, is still considered a 'free lunch' that reality will not allow. It is a fun read, possibly, 'til you realize people are taking it a bit too seriously. The book is valuable to me in that it illustrates the narcissism of those who believe themselves indispensable; to ignore Donne and make themselves an island until they get their way. Talented people exposing their juvenile and petulant side. What fourteen year old doesn't imagine himself a John Galt?

I once interviewed the entire Libertarian Party of the state I lived in, had 'em in the paper's conference room one day. I'd read Rand and other stuff, so I asked a few questions and mostly let 'em talk about how government ownership of things like roads was such an obvious failure.

When there was a lull in all the talk about how individualist private initiative was the engine of all goodness, I asked out of honest curiosity, just what these guys all did for a living, since none of them made any money in winning elections with their political opinions, cuz nobody was buying what they were selling. I sort of half-expected to hear that at least a couple were entrepreneurs, maybe started a successful hardware store or something.

Nope. They all worked for large corporations, and a couple even for a public utility. The characteristic thing, though, was that none of 'em saw the irony, the ludicrous disconnect with (for example) being a law professor who claims to be a "libertarian".

It's the Bear Stearns thing, the way the CEO of an utterly failed company bitched about Tim Geithner "He's got nothing....", because Geithner recognized that Bear Stearns was bankrupt.

Or T.J. Rodgers, who hallucinates that 'pork barrel spending' (by which he means democracy) has harmed Silicon Valley -- when it was defense spending that founded the semiconductor industry, and actually created the Internet (while it was Al Gore who opened it up to commercial traffic).

Folks who talk about 'going Galt' are like survivalists living in a national park. If anybody can name a prominent libertarian who doesn't actually live large off the rest of us, I'd like to know who they think it is.

Libertarians tend to use phrases like "If we let roads be private then the result would be..." They use phrases like "the result would be" a lot, because no functioning society AFAIK does or even did (in modern times) work like that. So they can't point to "Nation X does things our libertarian way, and look how well they're doing!" Some specific things can be pointed to, this or that deregulation that worked - but no "libertarian society" or nation is out there as a model. Isn't that interesting? (And their faith is unscientific ...)

This gets at something I've been thinking about since pundits blamed President Obama for the fact that his sincere efforts at bi-partisanship yielded not a single vote from House Republicans on the stimulus. House Republicans had their own narrow partisan reasons for not voting with the President. They wanted to send a loud message that the GOP of Ronald Reagan glory days was back. The 0 to 178 result had nothing to do with Obama's effort at all, and yet the situation developed among the chattering class that the standards by which the success or failure of the President's outreach efforts were measured lay entirely within the hands of his political adversaries. And they took full advantage of that.

Isn't something similar developing with the capital markets now? A standard GOP talking point is that there is hundreds of billions of dollars in unemployed private capital "sitting it out on the sidelines" because of the "uncertainty" Obama's policies have generated. According to conservative theology, Obama and the liberal democrats have disturbed the telepathic signals the free market sends to those holding cash that it's safe to put their boodle at risk. This, by the way, is precisely the same lame argument conservatives have been making to explain how the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression instead of ending it by wrecking the free market's natural recuperative powers. Government, not Wall Street, is to blame for the Great Depression say conservatives. Just like today. How convenient.

But who are these unnamed private investors sitting it out on the sidelines? Who are these people with their trillions in unspent cash scared away by the Obama Administration's imagined slide toward "European style socialism?" My guess is that they are mostly rich Republicans who have every reason to want Obama to fail. And like their GOP representatives in the House, they would rather see the economy slide into depression than see the laissez faire rules of the game that has worked so well for them changed in the slightest. Republicans, in other words, want us to believe that Obama's policies are a failure simply because Republicans have determined they should fail.

This was the screaming cat that Rush Limbaugh so inelegently let out of the bag with his admission that he wants Obama to "fail." Republicans and financial conservatives know this leaves them exposed with a public frightened about their future so that is why they are doing everything possible to move the spotlight away from the talk show big-mouth who is giving the game away.

Like FDR, Obama has one hand tied behind his back. Faced with an unprecedented failure of capitalism, he is trying to fashion solutions that retain as much of the free market and as many of the old rules of capitalism as possible. The jury is still out, but what he may be trying to do is restart an engine that's already broken. As a result, there is a case to be made that the real solution lies in something much more radical: A rethinking and rewriting of the rules of capitalism and the creation of a market that operates much differently than the hands-off system we have today. It would be an economy that retains the creativity and energy of private initiative but operates much more cooperatively. Conservatives, of course, will try to stigmatize any new economy involving government as "collectivism." That is why it is incumbent upon liberals to drown out these mindless slogans with details.

Like FDR, Obama is getting grief from free market fundamentalists and their conservative representatives who refuse to see that Obama is trying to save capitalism from itself and who are willing to see the public suffer for years if need be just so that nothing changes in a safe and comfortable economic world which has given them such a favored place.

Conservatives charge liberals with engaging in "class warfare" but the irony is that it's conservatives who view the world through the lens of class and do everything they can to preserve their position as a privileged upper class.

[i]Libertarians tend to use phrases like "If we let roads be private then the result would be..." They use phrases like "the result would be" a lot, because no functioning society AFAIK does or even did (in modern times) work like that.[/i]

There IS a society that works on libertarian/Randian principles -- no taxes, no central authority, no gun control. It's called Somalia -- which isn't anyone's idea of a properly functioning society, let alone Utopia.

Yeah, Somalia is a good point and often thrown at glibertarians. Eisbär, use "

I can't even insert the symbol here! OK, shift key on comma and period, not square bracket ...

I posed this question several years ago in a comment (I don't recall at which blog):

"What's the difference between a libertarian and a libertine?"

Response (anonymous, as I recall):

"The libertine actually gets laid."

Vive la difference!

Cuba would be an example of a country that the upper and middle classes have fled. Its economy is limping along, but it is still going after 50 years.

"Just think what kind of nightmare scenario we might be inflicted with if the titans of finance who've made up such a large proportion of high earners in recent years were to pull back on their efforts! I shudder."

GDP has fallen 6% and may fall more, and all of a sudden people who have never been entrepreneurs think they can do a better job than the entrepreneurs themselves. Just because the investors/entrepreneurs and other professionals are in a slump, it does not imply that Congress and federal bureaucrats can actually do a better job.

The people who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights perceived that one way to "promote the general welfare" was to restrict the scope and authority of the federal government. The Republican idea that people will recover from the recession faster if the government does not increase its scope and authority hearkens back to this idea. With 85% of Americans employed in the private sector, and with a track record of the private sector recovering from previous economic slumps, it's worth considering the Founders' recognition of the potential for government "help" to make things worse. This is especially important when you consider that the Obama/Democratic plan requires taking more money from the economically successful and giving it to the economically unsuccessful. This strategy might "spread the wealth around", but it is unlikely to grow the wealth.

The extreme case would be for Obama to take Hugo Chavez' advice and increase federal control over everything: GE, IBM, Boeing, Toyota USA, Pfizer, Wal-Mart, Wendy's, Archer-Daniels-Midland, Newman's Own salad dressing, BP America, Kaiser-Permanente Health Care. Obama isn't going to go to the extreme, but what the government is doing will have a serious cost in terms of rigidifying the economy.

I think you're missing the point, Hilzoy.

When 'going Galt', these people are not abandoning their jobs and letting sensible new workers in. No, they're holding on to their jobs but not doing anything -- not lending, not taking risks, not doing anything that might help the economy recover. They want to see Obama fail, and they're going to work to achieve *that*. They're not stepping aside; they're declaring their intent to sabotage the economy, to prove how much it needs them.

That version of 'going Galt' *could* cause a problem with the recovery. It certainly won't help the unemployment rolls.

Mnemosyne: Lots of people talk about it, but no one has the balls to actually do it.

And yet entrepreneurs are leaving California, and immigrant entrepreneurs are leaving the U.S. in larger numbers than ever before. Americans are using their right to pursue happiness by investing more money and time and effort in India and China. If the American reaction to the current economic slump is to make life harder for entrepreneurs and investors, then the outflow of talent and money will increase, whereas America's interest is for them to decrease.

To provide just one example, Quest Diagnostics Incorporated has over a period of time consistently reduced its operations in California while investing in new facilities in Georgia (USA), Florida (USA) and Bangalore (India). The CEO is an immigrant from India, and the US workforce is multi-ethnic, with immigrants from many countries. They can just as easily move themselves (with their talent and work ethic) to any other nation that provides a reasonable return on their investment. Should they leave, there are not, in fact, natural-born Americans ready to take up their jobs. Equally important, people who might have moved from France to the US to work for Quest will move from France to India to work for Quest, and India will receive the recognition and monetary awards from their patents. This is not an isolated example; there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of examples.

Restrict the rights of the entrepreneurs to pursue happiness here in the U.S., and they'll exercise the right elsewhere in larger numbers.

"Atlas" isn't "shrugging", "Atlas" is moving. It's well-documented. When "Atlas" solves the current economic crisis, economic growth will recover faster somewhere else than in the U.S. if the U.S. makes the "business climate" less inviting than before.

Bloggers have gone Toohey.

Two things struck me. Labor unions strike for higher wages or benefits all the time. They always lose income during strikes. The labor movement has the balls these dilletantes do not.

Secondly, the moneyed class faux Galts must assume that their actions will in some way put pressure on someone. They certainly wouldn't perform an empty gesture, as savvy as they are. Yet, there will always be someone to step in to replace them. A new breed of righteous scabs, perhaps.

MRM, then you of all people should be against the actual Republican practice of rewarding donor classes like trader speculators with lowered cap gains taxes etc. If we really want to reward real entrepreneurs, we'd do it differently from that - we'd have a big tax deduction for actual first start up capital. We'd try an idea I've been peddling for years, to allow superdeduction for employee wages to encourage hiring and reduce corporate taxes only for companies spending money on people instead of robots, etc. It isn't that you don't have a point at all in the abstract, it's that you don't get the difference between real entrepreneurs and capital manipulators etc. The latter have done the best under BushCo and that outfit. So maybe honest (?) quasi-libertarian outfits like Concord Coalition have some good ideas, but surely not the Republicans.

And MRM comes in to exhibit the keen insight that SURELY means he's going to be badly nicked by the increase in marginal income tax rates for those earning over $250K.

Because a 2-5% increase in MARGINAL tax rate for the highest earners will surely so eat into their pursuit of happiness that they will pull up stakes and leave the US. They will do so in the certain knowledge that when the world economy turns around it will surely be somewhere else where the marginal tax rates are much lower, there are lots of paying customers, and the infrastructure and stability will allow them far more happiness.

Of course, if minor variations in marginal tax rates make such a huge difference in their ability to pursue happiness maybe another term than entrepreneur applies. How about "greedy opportunistic vultures"? "Selfish, short sighted idiots"? "First up against the wallers"?

This strikes me as brainlessness squared.

First, let's shoot the economy in the foot in order to punish everybody for not appreciating our genius, for weighing us down with rules and taxes.

Second, let's shoot ourselves in the foot by depriving ourselves of the rewards of using our abilities.

Objectivism has a serious flaw: few people who think as well of themselves as the protagonists of her novels actually are as smart, wise, and talented as they think they are. There's a lot to be said for having an ego that's moderated. If you look at people who are as callously insensitive and self-serving as her guys are in real life, you'll find they're self-destructive and generally unhappy. The ego is a jealous, angry God.

Yeah, Somalia is a good point and often thrown at glibertarians. Posted by: Neil B

Wouldn't another good example of libertarian theory gone horribly wrong be Chile under Pinochet?

If I recall, Pinochet turned Chile into the model libertarian country, and then drove the economy into the crapper.

Ya it's kind of funny how the people talking about going Galt haven't actually done any productive work in years, if ever.

Collectively, they are a classic case of "don't let the door hit you where the Lord split you."

For the corporate white-collar crooks who fancy themselves "going Galt", I have a message.

The rest of us are "going Defarge".

GDP has fallen 6% and may fall more, and all of a sudden people who have never been entrepreneurs think they can do a better job than the entrepreneurs themselves. Just because the investors/entrepreneurs and other professionals are in a slump, it does not imply that Congress and federal bureaucrats can actually do a better job.

Weak, Marler. Pathetically dishonest even for you. The Republican policies you shill for got us into this mess. At this point, I'd trust Skippy the Wonder Lizard over the crooks and liars you shill for.

Jackass.

Stephen Daugherty wrote: "Objectivism has a serious flaw ..."

The most serious flaw of Objectivism is that it is completely wrong about its basic premise.

Human beings are social animals, like chimps and wolves. Indeed, humans are probably the most deeply and profoundly social of all social animals. The identity -- the "self" -- of a human being is inherently socially constructed.

A human who grew up in complete isolation from other humans would not be fully human. And enforced isolation from other humans -- e.g. solitary confinement -- is a proven method for breaking down the human personality.

The basic concept of "human nature" that is the very foundation of Ayn Rand's Objectivism -- the idea that a human being is an independent, separate entity whose selfhood owes nothing to other human beings -- is simply false. Indeed it is preposterously false.

And the premise of "Objectivism" is that it is a philosophy that is in accord with the empirically observable, objective nature of a human being. In fact it is not, since its basic concept of what a human being is, is demonstrably, empirically, objectively false.

Science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard created the science-fictional religion "Scientology" in order to get rich, and he did.

Ayn Rand (whose also began as a science fiction writer with her first novella, "Anthem") was up to something similar with Objectivism.

And yet entrepreneurs are leaving California, and immigrant entrepreneurs are leaving the U.S. in larger numbers than ever before.

You keep claiming this and yet never give a single statistic. Anecdote is not the plural of data. Please present actual numbers to demonstrate your claim rather than telling us that there's this guy you know who totally says he's going to move his company to another state when, you know, he has one to move.

Yes, a lot of jobs have moved offshore, but that has a lot more to do with the wage stagnation in the United States that we've been experiencing since the 1970s that means that the cost of consumer goods must be kept artificially low in order to keep the economy running. This is the problem with running an economy based on consumer spending -- when consumers don't have any money to spend, the economy goes in the shitter.

Your mythical "entrepreneurs" aren't moving off-shore because of taxes. They're moving off-shore because they can pay people $1 a day instead of a minimum of $5.65 an hour.

But I guess you think American citizens should be accepting $1 a day for their work like they do in Bangladesh and be grateful that the entrepreneurs are generous enough to pay us anything at all to work for them, right?

GDP has fallen 6% and may fall more, and all of a sudden people who have never been entrepreneurs think they can do a better job than the entrepreneurs themselves.

I do love the fact that Marler thinks that the CEOs of Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros., and Merrill Lynch are "entrepreneurs." I guess Carly Fiorina is an "entrepreneur" too.

Hint: "entrepreneur" doesn't mean "guy who's hired by the board of directors and given astronomical sums of money even if he fails." You should probably learn you use a dictionary before you make yourself look even more stupid.

Oh, and Matthew? If China is in a massive recession and India is headed for one, where are you picturing your American "entrepreneurs" setting up shop and making a profit?

If people want to "go Galt", I say great! I suspect that the economy will do just fine without them, since it's in the crapper largely as the result of the "work" of those involved in the derivatives repackaging.

Ted Frier:

"Like FDR, Obama has one hand tied behind his back. Faced with an unprecedented failure of capitalism, he is trying to fashion solutions that retain as much of the free market and as many of the old rules of capitalism as possible. The jury is still out, but what he may be trying to do is restart an engine that's already broken. As a result, there is a case to be made that the real solution lies in something much more radical: A rethinking and rewriting of the rules of capitalism and the creation of a market that operates much differently than the hands-off system we have today. It would be an economy that retains the creativity and energy of private initiative but operates much more cooperatively. Conservatives, of course, will try to stigmatize any new economy involving government as "collectivism." That is why it is incumbent upon liberals to drown out these mindless slogans with details."

I think this is an excellent observation. I would go even further, though. I've been saying for years that an economy which is predicated on an ever-increasing population base and an ever-increasing use of natural resources is ultimately doomed to failure.

Our current version of capitalism is based largely upon consumption. I'll offer X service, and you consume it while offering Y service which I consume. And the consumption of a lot of largely useless crap, in which endeavor we are egged on by a bloated advertisement industry. Not a good model where resources are ultimately limited.

I don't know what we do instead, but I like your idea of greater cooperation. In the arena of scientific discoveries, cooperation and information sharing drive further discoveries. Perhaps it's time to apply this to other endeavors as well. I'm just thinking "out loud" here. I don't know the answers, but we do have to start asking the questions.

MatthewRMarler: "...This is especially important when you consider that the Obama/Democratic plan requires taking more money from the economically successful and giving it to the economically unsuccessful. This strategy might "spread the wealth around", but it is unlikely to grow the wealth..."

The "economically successful" often got that way by less than honorable means. It may have generated results, but it can hardly be described as "successful." Maybe they stole or swindled it. And what prevents the "economically unsuccessful" from then being in a better position to finally take a stab at growing some wealth? Lack of economic success is not always the result of some irreversible, inherent character flaw.

Hilzoy,

(grrrrr) you stole my post title (well, an hour or three ahead of me ;-)

Mnemosyne,

I always thought Carly would have been perfect cast as the White Witch in the first Narnia movie. She probably did more damage to America's foundations than anyone else in recent memory.

This may be what they call a "teachable moment." Maybe the self-styled creative geniuses who want to "go Galt" and leave us all in the lurch could learn an unforgettable lesson in how thoroughly dispensable they actually are. George Bush, who was convinced not only that he was the only man capable of saving the country after the crisis of 9/11 but that God had chosen him to do it, was constitutionally obliged to "go Galt." He now can experience the educational process of watching a better man do his old job. I'd love to see a lot of these righties watch that happen.

"I am puzzled by one thing, however: the fact that none of the people who advocate "going Galt" seem to have actually done it."

Maybe somebody quietly slipped them that they are not 'achievers' and therefore don't get to go?

"GDP has fallen 6% and may fall more, and all of a sudden people who have never been entrepreneurs think they can do a better job than the entrepreneurs themselves."

MRM, can we clou you in:
The US economy IN THE LAST QUARTER OF 2008 (remember that was when your guy was still in the White House) shrunk at a rate, which, IF CONTINUED FOR ANOTHER THREE QUATERS, would amount to an annual decrease of 6.2%.

Also, in case you are not aware of that either: The the current recession has officially been dated to have started in December 2007. Which of course also means that it is all Obama's fault.

Wake me as soon as any of these whiners actually does go away to a remote retreat to await the day when their absence proves their point to the rest of us. I look forward to the quiet.

I'd be worried about people "going Galt" if any of the ones talking about it were involved in actually producing tangible economic goods. So far, not so much. Not only haven't they stopped working and gone away, but, well, I think the economy would get along just fine without any more Michelle Malkin columns, know what I mean?

(Sigh. Wouldn't that be nice?)

Americans are using their right to pursue happiness by investing more money and time and effort in India and China.

As someone whose best friend works closely with Indian entrepreneurs, I can't tell you how ridiculous your claim is. Indian entrepreneurs come HERE to take advantage of the money-making possibilities that simply aren't available in India due to the low wages, and tiny adjustments in the marginal tax rate aren't going to change that.

They outsource all kinds of labor to India, but they make their "entrepreneur" money here.

Quest Diagnostics Incorporated has over a period of time consistently reduced its operations in California

You have not even provided even remotely suggestive evidence that that Quest Diagnostics is moving from California for tax reasons.

That's likely because they haven't.

It's well-documented. When "Atlas" solves the current economic crisis, economic growth will recover faster somewhere else than in the U.S. if the U.S. makes the "business climate" less inviting than before.

What matters is not if the business climate in the U.S. is less inviting than before, but simply if it's more inviting than the global competition.

It is long past time for you to go Galt and deprive us of your unique ability to contrive things.

Companies are going galt becaue they're going broke. As for people who want to lower their incomes, that's what we all try to do come tax time. The rich have accountants who specializing it reducing income so they are better at if than most of us.

"Going Galt" == "Jumping the Shark"

it is not even a posture, it is a desperate last flailing gasp for relevance.

"Going Galt" is the conservative version of "Moving to France." Lots of people talk about it, but no one has the balls to actually do it.
Posted by: Mnemosyne on March 7, 2009 at 2:03 AM | PERMALINK

Now, now, a lot of people have moved to France. That's really not a fair comparison.

These guys are not so much going Galt as going Galbraith -- John Kenneth, that is. The supposed Galtians are only proving correct Galbraith's famous quote, "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." And what is more selfish that their alleged tantrum to take their ball, go home and not play anymore in the vain hope that others suffer because of it.

>I'm wondering how much wealth a forensic psychologist

Really, dude's dead.

Anyway, doesn't she, like pretty much all fps, work for the gummint?

I know you guys spend more time with MRM than I do so some of his stuff doesn't even penetrate anymore, but pls don't miss the good laugh over the statement that Obama's "socialistic" policies are purportedly driving people to COMMUNIST China.

The most obvious reason why the entrepreneurial classes won't "go Galt" is because they are addicted to wealth and greed. The top marginal income tax rate through most of the 1930's, 40's and 50's was between 63% and 94%, and there wasn't a revolution then. What makes us believe that a return to the Clinton top rate would change anything at all? Just a lot of noise from the rightwing blogosphere.

Wolfdaughter--

I'm with you. I'm just thinking out loud too. Don't know what the final shape of things will be but I too have this sense that many of our basic assumptions and practices will be changing, and changing for the better as we move from a highly individualistic (and selfish and wasteful) economic system to one that is much more cooperative, with government playing a much larger role since its the only instrument a democracy has to exert its will. We've learned a lot over the last century with collectivist experiments of the socialist and communistic sort to find ways to accomplish cooperation without the overbearing and oppressive kind of control that totalitarian systems present. But when you read even cheerleaders for chaotic globalization like Thomas Friedman you also appreciate the high degree of spontaneous global cooperation and "collective" activity that goes on, thanks in large part to modern technology that closes time and distance. It's this kind of grassroots community-building across national boundaries that makes such secretive, top-down, strong-executive governments like the one we've just endured with Bush and Cheney so obsolete. Hierarchal "imperial" government makes no sense in the inter-connected global world we are living in today.

The only Quest Diagnostics Incorporated which I can find is the scuzzy blood and poop testing company which I have to use in California. It's just a chain of unpleasant diagnostic labs.
There is nothing special about them.

They've bought out competition until there are never more than two companies which the health "insurers" allow us suckers to choose.

The sample centers are understaffed - sometimes only one employee - usually only two, usually too small to hold the waiting patients, and appointments are NOT allowed because that would take an investment in staff and software and would introduce free-market information. The only upside is that I can think of MRM the next time I submit a sample.

Isn't this how the aristocracy winds up with their heads on the end of a pitchfork?

PLEASE, Please "go Galt. lease. Take your unique skills to some island somewhere and then wonder bitch about how you cna;t get good servants. Please--to the heads of GM, AIG, Citbank, Bank of America, Chrysler, PLEASE go galt, and let people who can actually do the job come in and do it for less. That's how the market works!

Going galt can also mean not spending the money that you earn. Like me. I'll save it, let the gov't confiscate a bit of it and watch them flush it down the toilet. I used to invest, but why bother. Have you noticed the movement of the stock market lately?

Randians should be mocked like Scientologists, people who create their entire world view on an acknowledged work of fiction by a writer of fiction.

"We've learned a lot over the last century with collectivist experiments of the socialist and communistic sort to find ways to accomplish cooperation without the overbearing and oppressive kind of control that totalitarian systems present."

So this time we're going to get it right!! But what are you going to do with all the ones who won't cooperate, put "their heads on the end of a pitchfork" as Belshazzar suggests?

Ted Frier, there will be no "final shape" of things, the dialectic is unresolvable IMO. Additionally, whatever we have learned about collective experience is likely going to be useless because whatever emerges does so from a unique set of conditions and is not ex nilio. The dead hand of history weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living, as some really smart German dude said (more or less).

Reading comprehension isn't your long suit, is it (ir)Rational?

Belshazzar suggested nothing. Read the comment again...Isn't this how the aristocracy winds up with their heads on the end of a pitchfork?

That isn't a suggestion, that is an observation.

The one great benefit that could be realized should all of the Right Wing's "self-identified" productive class decide to drop out would be the immediate disappearance of a huge reservoir of mindless ego. However, I'm fairly certain there will be a direct correlation between size of ego and unwillingness to actually "Go Galt." That means Michelle, Dr. Helen, and all the others who are yammering loudest about going Galt will never leave us alone.

I love that these loons no longer believe in the labor theory of wealth. People who actually make stuff and provide services don't create wealth. People who manipulate large amounts of money they don't actually own do create wealth. And hence we get an economy that is 70% consumer driven but in which most Americans have seen buying power flatline in the last three decades while these nuts soak up all the wealth. Yay.

I used to invest, but why bother.

I'm with John. I'm gunna take my money, stuff it my mattress, and dig a fall-out shelter! And while I'm down there you silly peasants better stay the hell offa my lawn!!!

Meanwhile, Canada is full of American leftists who
said they'd move there if Bush won in '04.

If I would have Galted, it would have been during better times when my retirement account or other investments were larger. To Galt you need to be able to live off savings. The Galters, the highest-earners, don't tend to be the thriftiest so subsistence living off the grid isn't really an option.

Think of pulling out a big chunk of your 401k now? How appealing is that? People have the urge to sell, but now is the absolute worst time to be looking to sell investments.

Galting is a BS bluff that should be called at every opportunity - preferably after the bet has been raised.

Meanwhile, Canada is full of American leftists who said they'd move there if Bush won in '04.

In fact, the disastrous Bush residency prompted the highest rate of emigration in 30 years:

http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3433005&page=1

So we have Don 'economy's fine' Luskin saying John f'ing Thain had the audacity to ask for a big bonus. Earth to Luskin, Merrill has lost 35BILLION over the past 2 years - is that bonus deserving earnings?

Are people angry at Warren Buffet's wealth? Why, maybe because BRK hasn't gone hat-in-hand to Joe-taxpayer?

I wonder how many publicly "went Galt" during WWII and thereafter, when the top bracket was 91%? Country first?

"The most serious flaw of Objectivism is that it is completely wrong about its basic premise."

Uhm. You think the basic premise of Objectivism is people are not social animals? That's totally wrong. The whole idea of division of labor, freedom of contract, trade, is based on social interaction. All Rand argues is it should be a specific type of interaction (non-coersive). You'll actually find that she talks about humans being social animals all over the place in her non-fiction works.

The current financial mess, of course, has little to do with free markets. The Fed, money supply, tax code, etc. are all government interventions. I'm sure Rand would have no problem flushing the whole financial sector. It's a great example of the unholy marriage between business and government, where the success of a company is measured by its lobbying efforts. (Alan Greenspan professed to be an Objectivist, BTW, but clearly was not -- in that no Objectivist would preside over the Fed). Objectivists would like to see no influence peddling in government. No subsidies. No tax breaks, etc.

Even if you don't accept Rand's views, we should acknowledge that economic progress is predicated on certain conditions, and that it *is* possible to destroy those conditions. In other words, it's obviously not true that economic progress will continue *regardless* of what the environment is like (as mentioned above ...e.g., somalia, cuba, soviet union, etc.)

You may believe that we're far from risking that scenario, and maybe so. Libertarians generally see us as having slowly headed down that road for most of the 20th century. And in that time, we've gone from being a manufacturing powerhouse to "manufacturing" financial products (although with that said, we still manufacture a bit more than China, even with only 6% of the world's population).

If you have disdain for reading a mere novelist for economic ideas, and want someone properly credentialed, try Dr. George Reisman:

http://www.georgereisman.com/blog/

The Austrian School of economics is generally seen as the most consistent with a libertarian philosophy.

http://mises.org/

As far as the Somalia example in another comment -- suggesting it's representative of a Randian world-view -- how so? The foundation of Objectivist politics is that the government's primary role is to prevent physical coersion. Does Somalia seem like a good example of that?

As usual, the Randians have it ass-backward. Over the last eight years, with their idol in charge, the state of the infrastructure has gotten steadily worse, more jobs have been shipped "off shore" (oh, sorry Matthew, does that fuck up one of your wicked-pissah-smart points?), and real "objectivism", i.e. science, has been discarded in favor of religion. This situation - especially the decaying infrastructure aspect of it - is in line with Rand's view of what would happen if the "Looters" were in charge.

So let them "go Galt". With them gone - and not a moment too soon - the remaining adults can step in and fix things.

Of course, what Dr. Mrs. Putz meant by "going Galt" was the bold and courageous move of not tipping waiters/waitresses because it was likely they're Obama supporters. That will certainly bring the country to its knees, and make the rest of us beg them to come back. Or not.

Now, if we could just get all those Galtians to visit the roof at Todos Santos. (Not that they believe in evolution.)

Every tenure track professorship has hundreds of applicants when there's an opening. Doctors, denstists, and lawyers are crawling over each other for patients and clients. For every successful startup, there were dozens that failed. Our entire economy functions because every person who makes it to "the top" has hundreds of some of the best-educated, most intelligent people in the world working for that person. Leave a few to "go Galt" out of principle, and there will be dozens more willing to take their place because they don't give a shit about Galt and just want to be successful themselves and are happy to see less competition in the way.

Hey, if their taxes go up, doesn't that mean they have to work harder?

Matthew, don't you ever get tired of having your ass handed to you?

GDP has fallen 6% and may fall more, and all of a sudden people who have never been entrepreneurs think they can do a better job than the entrepreneurs themselves.

GDP fell under a Republican administration following classic Republican policies. And the people we are currently mocking are hardly "entrepeneurs," by any meaningful definition of that word, so yes, Matthew, we do think that we can do a better job than the morons who are "going Galt."

Just because the investors/entrepreneurs and other professionals are in a slump, it does not imply that Congress and federal bureaucrats can actually do a better job.

It's not about a "better" job, Matthew; it's about who can inject money into the system at the moment and get things moving again. Free clue: the federal government is the *only* institution with the will and the wherewithal to do it.

The people who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights perceived that one way to "promote the general welfare" was to restrict the scope and authority of the federal government.

So? Show me that the federal government is violating the Constitution and I might give you more than a yawn. But your argument is moronic, in any case, since we happen to have learned just a teensy little bit about economics in the past 200 years -- at least those of us on our side of the aisle have.

If you still want to live in an agrarian society, by all means find yourself a remote outpost and do so. The rest of us will take advantage of the information gleaned over the past 200 years, most notably since the Great Depression, and will do our best to save your sorry ass along with everyone else's.

The Republican idea that people will recover from the recession faster if the government does not increase its scope and authority hearkens back to this idea.

Which makes it really moronic, since it is not backed up by anything resembling logic, reason, or evidence. It is a faith-based argument and, frankly, I prefer to live in the real world, thanks.

With 85% of Americans employed in the private sector, and with a track record of the private sector recovering from previous economic slumps

Uh-huh ... just like the Great Depression. How'd that work out for you? Moron, do you really not know just how much the federal government and, in particular, the Federal Reserve helped to deal with those previous economic slumps? In every case, the slumps would have been longer, deeper, and more painful without such action. In this case, alas, the Federal Reserve's biggest weapon has been rendered powerless, which is why we have to seek elsewhere.

This is especially important when you consider that the Obama/Democratic plan requires taking more money from the economically successful and giving it to the economically unsuccessful.

Moron, Obama is simply returning those numbers to where they were before, to a time when we had unprecedented economic growth. There is no, repeat no, correlation between tax cuts/hikes and economic growth, outside the extremes.

This strategy might "spread the wealth around", but it is unlikely to grow the wealth.

Too bad the evidence is against you on that. There is strong evidence to show that "spreading the wealth around" actually does help the economy to grow, at all levels. A strong middle class is far more essential to growth than is a plutocratic society where wealth is concentrated at the top.

The extreme case would be for Obama to take Hugo Chavez' advice and increase federal control over everything

Since nobody has proposed such a thing, forgive me if I laugh at this stupid strawman of yours.

but what the government is doing will have a serious cost in terms of rigidifying the economy.

Complete bullshit. You know it's not true, of course, since you don't even *try* to defend this silly assertion. This was pathetic.

With 85% of Americans employed in the private sector, and with a track record of the private sector recovering from previous economic slumps

This is somewhat odd. We know that government spent $2.3T in FY08 (leaving off social security since it's self-funding ATM).

Assuming $50K per job, that's FORTY-SIX MILLION JOBS either directly or indirectly funded by government spending.

Given around 140M jobs in total, that's more like 1 out of 3 jobs are federally-funded.

"I'm sure Rand would have no problem flushing the whole financial sector."

but, but, but, isn't that coercion?

I don't recall who said it regarding Ayn Rand and Randians in general but it goes like this: if writers were countries, and BS were crude oil, Ayn Ran would be Saudi Arabia.You know damn well not a one of these "galtians" is going to give up a single cent of their income given that their pampered lives is ties to that level of income.This is the economic variant of the wingnut chickenhawk who supports war without ever having been to one or considering being in one.